December 2, 2009
Transcribed: birthing herself into the kingdom of God
Jackie Bauman, November 29, 2009.
Well, I don’t remember things in great detail or order but I never forget what mother went through in her passing.
She was at home and I’m trying to think how it started — I brought her — I don’t know how close it was to when she had her surgery, but she didn’t like anybody telling her what to do, but I think it was a Saturday that she was here and Dad was coming in and out because we were the only ones at the farm at the time and there’s just something that you intuit when there’s not somebody there explaining to you what’s going on but I felt very strongly that she was going to pass from this world to the next that day and it’s amazing because you don’t — there’s nothing that tells you that that’s going to happen, but you have an inner sense of awakening that things are not just a usual Saturday and so we were in the bedroom and mom was sitting on the edge of the bed and she was talking and then she quieted down and just was sitting there — I was behind her and she was facing forward and I was facing the back of her and at a certain time she started going into a breathing pattern and I looked at her to see what she was doing and she was sort of lying there with her body going forward like this over and over and over again and I thought, I wonder what’s she’s doing, but she continued that and then I realized that she was, her body was, in a motion like she was pregnant and needed to release a baby and so I just sat there — she was very very intent with what she was doing and wasn’t talking to anybody but just concentrating on what her body needed her to do — and so she sat there and then she would kind of go kind of you know a breathy sound and then she’d lean back a little bit and then she’d take another breath and then she’d push a little harder and I was watching her and I thought this is strange because I was with Dad when he died and he didn’t do anything like that, he just sat there, and his, you know, worked with his breathing, until finally there was no breath left for him to take.
But Mom was, like I said, very intent with what her body was asking her to do and so she just kept sort of pushing down with a — like she was doing some hard work — and so I just continued to watch her and I thought well if she needs any help from me, if she says anything, or asks for help, at least I’m there to help her and so you know she started this breathing pattern and then it became stronger and she was beginning to get into a pattern of expelling all of the breath in her and then relaxing and then it started up again and she’d press down again, and again expelled all the air in her, and then took another breath and this was I don’t know how many breaths she took but there were several and I watched her very carefully because if she needed any help from me I needed to be right there with her and so she took another breath and she on this one when she was coming up she just sort of bent over forward and she went in a very intent way and was thrusting out every breath in her body exactly the way that a pregnant woman would do at her time of delivery and Dad came in at that time and I said Dad, she’s birthing herself into the kingdom of God, I said, I don’t know what else to call it because I’ve never seen this before but she’s delivering herself to God through this process and then she leaned back and kind of let everything go and then she did it one more time but it was not as intense this time because the second to the last breath was very very intentional and very very strong so she pushed and pushed and pushed on that second to last one so that by the time it came for her last breath she was very gentle like Dad was and breathed in a breath and then slowly but quietly but very thoughtfully let it out like that.
And she never took another breath after that and I just put my hands on her shoulders and I said that’s good Mom I said you’ve done a work today which is taking you to another place and I’m proud that you can be there and I wish you the best and she’d talked about Mildred her sister the night before — I said do you see Mildred? Because the night before she was asking where’s Mildred — she was looking all over the house for Mildred — and so I said if you do see Mildred tell her hello for me and that I love her and if you see Grandma tell her also that I love her and that I will see her sometime too and she made no response she just — and I didn’t ask anything more of her because I didn’t know how in the transition of life from this world to the next what she was involved with — I didn’t know if she had to go through a process of entry or if it was just a closing of the eyes in one world and an opening into another — I don’t have any idea — but she did that with great intention and great seriousness and then I just waited to see if there was any more breath coming from her and I gave a hug and a kiss and I said we’ll just be with you for a while Mom if you need anything let me know because sometimes they say the spirit circles the body after it’s gone and I wanted whatever time she needed to have to take her time and go where she needed to go with the strength that she had in her and there was no more sound no more anything other than just a sitting there and that was it.
But I thought that she knew what was going on at least enough to know that something very miraculous just occurred and I felt good for her and said do you see Dad? I said, if you see Dad tell him hello from me too because I love him and then again there was no response but I am sure she — if you see people or, on the other side — she was searching for these people that she loved and had lost had you know through death you know before her so that was basically the process but when I saw her bearing down like she was giving birth to a child I thought she knows what she’s doing and what that results in and there’s a response to that action and I was just happy for her to Mother I said you are free at last to be who you are and I just said you know find out where you are and enjoy the people you’re with and just I said again tell aunt Mildred that I love her and that I’m waiting to see her too and I don’t know if she heard it or not but that was how it ended, looking for people that she would know.
And that was it.
How long did that process take?
Once it started I think it was about a half hour to forty minutes.
And did you know before that half hour that it was coming?
There was something that just sort of nudged me like don’t leave her alone, don’t leave her, and of course I would go over to the house to do some stuff and then I would come back and see how she’s doing but then there was a point that I could tell that there had been some change in her mind about where she was and then so I said to Dad I said I think she’s going to go pretty soon and I don’t want to leave her till it’s over. He said well she looks like she’s on her way but then when he came back and saw the pushing and then bearing down he thought that was interesting too.
Was it different from grandpa’s passing?
It was different because grandpa didn’t say anything and he was just breathing his way through from this world to the next — he didn’t talk — and I was just saying to him — to me, mom needed to go — she showed that I need to be released from this house, from this body, and then it surprised me that she lived six years after dad died.
Yeah, you would have thought she would gone before then.
Yes and she was younger and she paid attention to things more than dad did. He stayed right through you know he didn’t talk much at the end but he just did his breathing very quietly and on his last breath he didn’t stop and then try to inhale. He just exhaled and that was it.
What are your thoughts now that she’s gone?
It was interesting because after her passing I would look out of this corner of my eye and she was on my shoulder. She stayed on my shoulder more than a year. And I thought, I’m taking care of my mother. She needs me to be near her. And she stayed with me for a long — maybe — I don’t know how long — I didn’t — time wasn’t a concern, it was just knowing that she was there and that she I think needed to be with somebody she knew. That’s all I could think of. But then after a while she faded from my eyes and I never saw her again. . . .
It wasn’t that she was whole. She was translucent. She was sort of. Ghost-like. Not with the sheet, I don’t mean that, but very light and I just whenever I’d turn my head to the side I’d think, she’s still there.
And I thought, why does she need to be with me?
And there was no answer that I could grasp other than the fact that maybe for her the transition was overwhelming.
Did you ever get a sense of what her purpose was?
In what?
In staying there with you.
Not really.
I mean at first it surprised me, I thought, Mom you can go and be with Mildred and Dad and other people that you know but she — I didn’t do that — I just felt like she needed to be there and I shouldn’t shoo her away.
What about your own thoughts about your relationship with her?
Well I think it resolved some things from my perspective that she was dealing with the fact that she had not been very nice to me and to Richard before she passed on but there was nothing to be done about that. It was just the way it was. And then I thought she must need me or she wouldn’t be here, so I accepted her, I just said to myself, let it be, let her be where she needs to be. And then finally, maybe a year or two before she died, she went away. I noticed that she wasn’t there. I thought, good, she must have made the transition finally and everything is okay, because I never felt a worry and none of it was panic on her part.
But the whole thing of the child bearing I thought that was quite unique. And I’ve talked with hospice people. I said have you ever seen anything like that? And one person said no, I’ve never seen that and another one said to me you never know what you’ll see Jackie. She says that happens over and over again so to me it’s like those who have eyes, they see not, those who have ears, they hear not, but if you are in tune, you will see it, you will hear it, and you’ll understand it.
Thank you for sharing that with me. I enjoyed sharing the process when he passed.
That was so important.
I didn’t have the same closure with grandma.
Right.
It feels good to know what her day was like — that you were there with her.
Right. That we didn’t leave her alone I mean if in the middle of the night you don’t know when a parent dies if a person dies if I didn’t want to leave them and then find them dead without any closure ahead of time if there would be if there would be any.
Do you remember what the date was?
For grandma?
It was the week after her birthday, the seventeenth of July.
Her birthday was July the 8th. So that must have been the 18th — somewhere like that.
Thanks.
You’re welcome.
The thing is — it was neither — it was not shocking, but it wasn’t –
It was natural.
It was natural. It was different and unusual but it wasn’t scary or fearful.
Yeah, that’s what I thought with grandpa.
His passing went, I thought, very well.
Yes. Peaceful.
Quiet.
Yeah.
His passing made me feel like he was in charge of it — he was — he still had some strength left.
Yeah. And he chose when he was ready to go.
Yeah.
Yeah, it felt that way to me too.
I think when we see people die like that we’ve been given a privileged position to go through that with them.
I agree. And the year before seeing Zoe born.
Yeah. Right.
Well. Good.
Yep.
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this is really wonderful.
Oh, Deron. Thank you.
This is beautiful Deron.
Oh Jesus Deron, I hope you know how good this is. So few people in the world know how to understate things in this way, to get at that rhythm that sort of does what a Jackson Pollock painting does. All that life, right there.
I think when we see people die like that we’ve been given a privileged position to go through that with them.
Yes, yes.
Lovely, Deron.
Lovely Jackie.
Thank you for sharing. This is very moving.
And the accompanying photograph is evocative.
I didn’t know if she had to go through a process of entry or if it was just a closing of the eyes in one world and an opening into another
Remarkable. Thank you, Deron.
This hits hard, Deron. We were all there when my mom left us on Valentines’ Day, 2007. I miss her a lot.
Well done, sir.
Wonderful, Deron.
thank you. I’m glad people are enjoying this. she had wanted to tell me the story for a while so I asked if I could record it this weekend.
nicely done, and I love the portrait.
Beautiful. Thank you for this, and Jackie too. There’s a lot of letting go in a person’s passing. It probably should be treated like a birth.
This is so beautiful.
A couple of years ago a dear friend of mine’s father was dying of cancer. She had brought her two young children with her back to her hometown to stay with him as he died. He had said he goodbyes and he was really suffering, so my friend and her brother decided to use the extra morphine the hospice people had given them to release him from the pain. My friend’s husband, who is an ordinary man in many ways, took her aside and said, “I don’t know about this, you believe in natural birth, what about natural death?” My friend thought about this for a while and decided to wait it out with her dad. He lasted that night and into the next day, when he suddenly seemed lucid and smiled up at them. He took a deep breath and then died. My friend says that he looked tranquil and happy and the smell of roses was everywhere.
It seems to me that experiences, painful, beautiful, ordinary, are the stuff of life. I don’t want to miss any part of the ride.
Beautiful. A lovely piece of writing. I lost my Mom two years ago. Quite suddenly. I was not there. I have made a short film about it but never shown it to anyone for I fear it is not perfect. I want it to be perfect. A perfect tribute. You wrote a perfect tribute.
…and the transcription of this, Deron, is another in the long line of birthings… and a mythic retelling of the worlds we are born into.
Lynn, you and I are thinking similar thoughts. I was struck by the fact of Deron’s posting this the same day as I posted links to interviews with Cooper and with Phil, in which Cooper spoke of a fictional “collecting [of] old tales from older men and women” and Phil talked about his series of photographs of old people and about engaging them in conversation.
So many ways to pass stories along.
So many of us die medicated in hospitals that this is not at all an experience most people get to have.
Medicated — which is to say, drugged.
A bad word.
There is something I might say one of these days about this, Sheila and Cooper. I’ve had the experience of being in both situations, though I wasn’t present at the moment of passing of one. Danny’s father passed in the hospital. We had driven to Dallas, to drive his father and step-mother back up to Des Moines. He was ready to “go home.” We drove them up, 14 hours, if I remember correctly. The weekend after we went back to visit. Danny’s sister and brother-in-law were there, too. On Sunday morning, as we were actually getting ready to leave, Danny’s Dad fell in the bathroom. Danny and Denny went to see. When they came out, Danny’s Dad said, “I think I’m ready to go to the hospital.” An ambulance was called. Took him. We followed. Turned out, Danny and I stayed with Joan, Danny’s step-mom (his mom had passed a mere three or four years prior. Joan’s husband had passed some years before that, but the two couples were fast and best friends as couples) at the hospital. I remember sleeping in the wee hours of the morning on the couch in the “visitors room.” There were moments of delight. Once, toward the middle of the week, Danny’s Daddy roused to say “Somebody give me a push, I’ve run out of gas.” The three of us heard it. Gave us a moment of humor to bear further with him. When he was nearing the end on Thursday. We decided I should go home and get more clothes and take care of a couple things at the house. I left. Danny called me that evening. His Dad had passed. I went back the next morning with fresh clothes. We stayed through the burial.
At my brother’s passing, he was in his bed at home. We were all around him. What drugs he had in him, they weren’t crazy drugs. He’d had morphine pills for pain. But he wasn’t on a drip or anything like that. But, honestly, he had laid himself down to die, that day when he laid down. Maybe I will tell more about it one day. I don’t know. We, the immediate family, were there when he passed. I feel like like I’ve just gone on too long about it. I don’t know what to say more, except, there are moments when you see how your passing might go. And you hope for such peace as it seemed he had in that moment.
Read this as it is folks, I will not go back an edit it.
XOR
Oh, Rick. You know, Deron’s post has touched us all in so many ways. Thank you for your latest (unedited) response.
I hope my previous comment did not hit too strident a tone.
Just meditating on good and bad deaths I have known.
Grateful to Deron (and to Jackie, whom I have yet to meet) for giving this to us.
I’m taking your lead, Rick, and letting my comment-before-last stand unedited. It doesn’t make much sense and is likely misleading but it is raw and from the heart.
Sheila, stridant not at all. It was weird for me, though, moving from sheer comedy, in previous comments, to this was ubrupt and a bit disconcerting. Such is the way it comes to us in life, isn’t it?
It’s the way it comes, you bet!
I was really just gnashing at the word ‘medicated’ — and I mean no offense, Cooper.
That’s really all that set me off.
Ordinarily I’m not easily ruffled.
And dear Sheila, I wadn’t takin’ issue with “medicated.” Lord, I hope I’m medcated to the point of craziness, just after I’ve said my good byes. To Cooper’s point, I don’t know that I would get the chance to choose. I think I would like to meet my days with all my ducks in a row and get to say “so long.” I’m not so sure we all get to have the luxury. But if it comes, I hope to meet it with grace and peace. If I get the chance to.
Me, I was jumping on a petty hobbyhorse of mine (dislike of the word ‘medicated’); my comment was out of keeping with the tone of the post and of others’ comments. An unfortunate blurt.
You are gracious, Rick.